No. 3286

Apple Cake

Gateau aux Pommes

Prepare a frolle paste (No. 136); keep it in a cool place on ice for twenty minutes. Cut about fifteen good apples in four, peel, shred them small and cook partially, while tossing them over a brisk fire, in a pan with some butter, sugar and vanilla added, then set aside to cool. Roll out two-thirds of the paste, not too thin, four inches wide and about the length of the baking sheet on a floured table; roll it over the rolling-pin to unroll on a baking sheet and cut it away straight; surround the edges with a narrow raised rim, and put in a moderate oven to half bake and leave till quite cold. Then fill the center with the cooked apples and finish exactly the same as the gooseberry cakes (No. 3309).

← No. 3285 Waffles with Vanilla—Light Small Cakes for Entremets No. 3287 Apricots with Cream of Almonds →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional kitchen with a pastry cook already at the elbow, so the cross-references do most of the work. The whole thing is a long strip tart: a sweet almond short paste, blind-baked pale, filled with buttery apple, then finished with lattice and glaze.

Frolle pastePâte frolle is a sweet short paste enriched with ground almonds and egg yolk, closer to a Linzer dough than to pie crust. A good pâte sucrée with a quarter of the flour replaced by almond flour behaves the same way. It is fragile and tears; patch it in the pan rather than re-rolling.
Keeping it on iceIn a kitchen of this date that meant the ice box, or the dough set literally on ice. Twenty minutes' chilling is the minimum; an hour is better, and this dough rolls far more willingly cold.
Moderate ovenAround 350F is the usual modern reading, though Ranhofer gives no temperatures. The strip is only half baked at this stage — set and barely coloured — because it goes back in after filling.
Fifteen applesCloser to 5 or 6 lb of fruit, for a strip run the full length of a commercial baking sheet. Scale the quantity down for a shorter home sheet. Use a variety that holds its shape, not a mealy one.
"Cook partially"The hinge. The apples are tossed over high heat only until the edges soften and the liquid cooks off — they finish in the oven, and apples cooked to sauce first will weep and soak the base. Cool them completely before filling, or the paste steams.
The raised rimA narrow rope of paste run round the edges of the strip, which contains the fruit and gives the lattice something to sit on.
Finishing "as the gooseberry cakes"Finishing 'as the gooseberry cakes' -- No. 3309 is not given here. In Ranhofer's strip cakes of this type the filled strip is generally crossed with narrow bands of the same paste, returned to the oven until the lattice colours, and glazed. Judge the second bake by colour.
YieldA full-length strip cuts into eight to twelve slices on the bias. It is meant as an entremets — a sweet course served warm or at room temperature, not straight from the oven.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer spent over thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the restaurant's working system written down: numbered items that reference one another rather than repeat themselves, which is why this cake sends you to No. 136 for the paste and No. 3309 for the finish. The long strip tart baked directly on a sheet, cut across into portions, is a French pastry-room economy — one piece of work yields a service's worth of plates, and the same construction takes gooseberries, apricots or plums depending on the month. Pâte frolle itself is generally traced to Italian almond pastry and reached French professional kitchens under that name; the almond keeps the crust from going sodden under wet fruit.